Zombies: Part 2

“The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. And the LORD God commanded the man, ‘You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will certainly die’” (Genesis 2:15-17).

“Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned” (Romans 5:12).

“[F]or all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).

Part 1 reflected on those that appear within the community of God as full-fledged members of the Faith. Jesus called the Pharisees “whitewashed tombs.” They looked righteous on the outside, but they hid lives full of sin. Sin is death. Therefore, the Pharisees were dead. Jesus singled them out, as opposed to others who did not even try to hide their sin (e.g., tax collectors and prostitutes), because the Pharisees took it upon themselves to teach others how to follow God’s way. Their hypocrisy ended in crushing their followers under an impossible burden of requirements, or they succeeded in infecting their followers with the cancer of hypocrisy. I introduced the concept of the “zombie” to describe the Pharisees. They were the living dead that consumed the living entirely. Those that were not completely consumed became zombies themselves. In the end, I warned that there are zombies among the church today, and faithful followers of Christ must be careful.

Part 1 left “zombie” at the level of metaphor. In this part, I want to push the concept beyond metaphor to reality. In Genesis 2, God told Adam and Eve that they would die, they would certainly die, if they ate to fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. In Genesis 3, Adam and Eve eat the fruit and are expelled from the Garden of Eden. Eden was life. In fact, the Tree of Life stood in the middle of the Garden, and Adam and Eve, once expelled, could not consume its life-giving fruit. Blocked from the source of life, humans were dead. Still, humans worked furiously to fill their insatiable appetite for life-giving nourishment. Humans became roving corpses forced to sustain their havoc by consuming other living things.

How is this reality? We all have to eat. What do we eat? Things that used to be alive (or are alive in some cases). We eat animals. We either have to hunt them down and kill them, or we have to farm them and slaughter them. Then we cook’em and eat’em. Yum! You vegetarians and vegans out there are just as guilty. We eat vegetables. Any kind of flora is just as much alive as is any kind of fauna. You pick it and eat it. We all kill to eat. Death reigns in all of creation because humans are zombies.

We have all sinned; thus we are all dead. We are under the curse of sin simply in virtue of being human. We have all been stillborn. We move and live and have our sinful being at the expense of other life. We are not self-sustaining. We require life to be alive. Sin killed us, and God removed us from an everlasting source of life when He expelled us from the Garden. And, as you will see, there is no remedy for our being zombies. We are zombies.

How’s that for a teaser?

Jeremy Green

Grace is NOT an Excuse to Sin

¹What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? ²By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? ³Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? ⁴We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life." - Romans 6:1-4 (NIV)

There is a lot of talk nowadays about GRACE inside the church (and there should be). Tragically, however, grace is being displayed to all the wrong people for all the wrong reasons. Rather than call people to "holiness," Christians today would rather tolerate people's proclivity to sin, and justify this deadly act as, "an extension of grace."

Now this sounds great, loving and compassionate (all characteristics of true followers of Jesus), but is it biblical? Tragically, it is NOT, as Romans 6 so wonderfully declares.

Loving sinners, and extending compassion for their sinful acts is not GRACE, but rather a mockery of GRACE. Let's face it, you and I cannot be gracious, because grace is something that only a judge (or authoritarian) can distribute. By its simplist definition, grace is simply "being spared the punishment of which you deserve." And with this being the case, it is only God who can demonstrate grace, since He alone is Lord/Judge of all. (Check out the bible. The grace being demonstrated and talked about is always God's alone.)

God's people are called to live HOLY. We are called to love the things God loves, and hate the things He hates. Simply put: we are to be IMAGE BEARERS of God, which means that we are to act as His imitators here on Earth (Eph. 5:1). God hates sin and loves sinners. Therefore, He is gracious towards sinners, but never towards their sins. (Gen. 1:27, Psalm 97;10, Romans 12:9, I Peter 1:15)

So, what are we, as Christians, suppose to do? Go around hating people? NO! Create churches where only "perfect people" are allowed in? Impossible! The answer lies in previously stated truth, we are to be "imitators of God."

God is Love. Love seeks after what is good, forsakes that which is evil. Love leads through humility, and promotes the good in others. Christians are called to LOVE people by encouraging them to allow God to re-build into the "Image of God." This call/opportunity to be rebuilt is GRACE.

Zombies: Part 0

First, I have to admit that the "zombie" concept is not my own. I first heard it used in a sermon by Peter Hiett, the then-pastor at Lookout Mountain Community Church outside of Denver, CO. He is now at The Sanctuary, a church in Denver. His sermon was derived from Matthew 23:27, which happens to be the passage behind Zombies: Part 1. I thought that the idea of "zombies" captured so much, that I've long desired to flesh it out a bit more than Peter did in that sermon.

Here's what to expect:

1. I'm going to try to get through all of it by Friday, but that's no promise. I will also try to get a new part up everyday. We'll see how that goes.
   
   
2. As far as content is concerned, each post centers around the fact that zombies are dead through-and-through. They live only at the expense of the living. Zombies have two goals: (i) find living humans and (ii) eat them. It's not a pretty picture, but it is the world we live in. The series will culminate with the source of true life by focusing on The Lord's Supper. I think we'll see some interesting ideas arise about the nature of the church, the individual, and the individual's relation to Jesus through the church.
   

I don't want to let the cat out of the bag, so I'll stop there. Comments are both welcome and appreciated.

N.b., I posted Part 1 first so it shows up below this post. So read this first, then keep going to Part 1. You'll get Zombies: Part 2 tomorrow.

Jeremy Green

Zombies: Part 1

“‘Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean.’” (Matthew 23:27).

These guys are zombies. They look alive, but they’re nothing more than walking corpses. They’re the living dead. Notice, zombies aren’t really alive; they’re dead, really dead. They derive all their power by consuming the living. They feast on the bodies and drink the blood of the living. Those they don’t entirely consume become zombies too.

The Pharisees looked like righteous teachers. They were respected because they were able to maintain reputations for public acts of righteousness. Jesus confronted them because those reputations hid deep sin, and we know that the wages of sin is death (Rom. 6:23). They looked alive but were dead.

Here comes the worst part. In Mt. 23:15, Jesus said to the Pharisees, “Woe to you ...! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are.” The Pharisees subjected their disciples to impossible requirements to attain their form of righteousness. The problem is that not even the Pharisees met their own standards!

There are only two options for their disciples.

1. The disciples could try to actually live by the standard, doing what the Pharisees themselves could never do. These disciples would be destroyed under the weight of that heavy burden, give up on attaining righteousness, and return to a life of open sin. These disciples would be dead.
   
   
2. The disciples could appear to uphold the standards of Pharisaical righteousness while hiding their lives of sin. In other words, they could just become real Pharisees; they would look alive but were dead.

Is it any wonder Jesus said these converts were “twice as much” sons of hell? Prior to conversion, they were dead in their sins. After conversion, they either return to open sin, or they live in hidden sin. Either way, they give up their desire for true righteousness and leap headlong into destruction. They end up dead in their sins a second time.

The zombie Pharisees hunt all over the world for food. When they get their hooks into people, they consume them and steal their life. Watching their disciples perish under impossible standards is how they satisfy their zombie appetite for flesh and blood. You can almost hear the Pharisees say, “Well, we can and do meet the requirements of righteousness; we are closer to God than these sinners.” The loss of disciples to sin puffs them up; it makes them feel alive. It’s a veritable zombie buffet. If the zombie Pharisees don’t eat them, the wounds they inflict are sufficient to turn their disciples into zombies. These new zombies follow suit and start chowing down to satisfy an insatiable appetite for real life.

What’s the lesson? Well there are three.

1. If you’re dead, you’re dead. No amount of outward performance on your part can bring you from death to life. Sure, James says that faith without works is dead (James 2:26), but that does not mean that good works are sufficient to guarantee the worker has faith. Rather, genuine living faith is sufficient to guarantee works performed by the faithful. If you’re doing all the good in the world, but you lack faith in Christ demonstrated by submission and obedience to his rule, then you’re a zombie. You’ll do nothing but suck the life out of all you come into contact with.
   
   
2. Look out for zombies inside the church in places of authority, and look out for their zombie followers. Jesus was condemning teachers inside the community of God. The church is the community of God. Look out for them because they want to eat you or turn you; either way, you’re dead.
   
   
3. If you see a zombie, run!

Bring Forth What Thou Wilt!

[The following is a passage from “The Martyrdom of Polycarp,” in Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 1, eds. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson. Polycarp was a disciple of the Apostle John and the bishop of Smyrna. In The New Foxe’s Book of Martyrs (New Jersey: Bridge-Logos Publishers, 1997), John Foxe reports that Polycarp was martyred under the Roman emperor Marcus Arelius. Just for reference purposes, Arelius was the old emperor who was murdered by his son towards the beginning the movie “The Gladiator.” “[Arelius] was ... fierce and merciless toward Christians and responsible for the fourth general persecution against them. The cruelties against Christians in this persecustion were so inhuman that many of those who watched them shuddered with horror, and were astonished at the courage of the sufferers. Despite terrible torture and death, “few turned from Christ or begged their torturers to lessen their pains” (Foxe, 15-16).

At the time of his martyrdom, Polycarp was 86 years old. Polycarp knew that the Romans were after him. He ran and tried to hide, but the Romans captured one of his young servants. They tortured the servant, and he broke, confessing Polycarp’s location. Polycarp went peacefully into custody, and the passage below opens with him being marched into the local stadium. Some of the passage may not be clear to a modern audience, so I want to explain what is going on in the story. The “proconsul” was the ruler of the city and responsible for prosecuting Polycarp. When the proconsul tells Polycarp to “swear by the fortune of Caesar,” he’s essentially telling Polycarp to admit that the Roman emperor, not Jesus, is both lord and God. When the proconsul tells Polycarp to say “Away with the Atheists,” he is telling Polycarp to renounce the church. The Romans worshiped a large number of different gods. Since the Christians worshiped rejected the Roman gods and worshiped Jesus, the Christians were accused of atheism. Of course, when Polycarp says “Away with the Atheists,” gesturing toward the crowd, he is pointing out just who the real atheists are.]

From “The Martyrdom of Polycarp”

Now, as Polycarp was entering into the stadium, there came to him a voice from heaven, saying, “Be strong, and show thyself a man, O Polycarp!” No one saw who it was that spoke to him; but those of our brethren who were present heard the voice. And as he was brought forward, the tumult became great when they heard that Polycarp was taken. And when he came near, the proconsul asked him whether he was Polycarp. On his confessing that he was, [the proconsul] sought to persuade him to deny [Christ], saying, “Have respect to thy old age,” and other similar things, according to their custom, [such as], “Swear by the fortune of Caesar; repent, and say, Away with the Atheists.” But Polycarp, gazing with a stern countenance on all the multitude of the wicked heathen then in the stadium, and waving his hand towards them, while with groans he looked up to heaven, said, “Away with the Atheists.” Then, the proconsul urging him, and saying, “Swear, and I will set thee at liberty, reproach Christ;” Polycarp declared, “Eighty and six years have I served Him, and He never did me any injury: how then can I blaspheme my King and my Saviour?”

And when the proconsul yet again pressed him, and said, “Swear by the fortune of Caesar,” he answered, “Since thou art vainly urgent that, as thou sayest, I should swear by the fortune of Caesar, and pretendest not to know who and what I am, hear me declare with boldness, I am a Christian. And if you wish to learn what the doctrines of Christianity are, appoint me a day, and thou shalt hear them.” The proconsul replied, “Persuade the people.” But Polycarp said, “To thee I have thought it right to offer an account [of my faith]; for we are taught to give all due honour (which entails no injury upon ourselves) to the powers and authorities which are ordained of God. But as for these, I do not deem them worthy of receiving any account from me.”

The proconsul then said to him, “I have wild beasts at hand; to these will I cast thee, except thou repent.” But he answered, “Call them then, for we are not accustomed to repent of what is good in order to adopt that which is evil; and it is well for me to be changed from what is evil to what is righteous.” But again the proconsul said to him, “I will cause thee to be consumed by fire, seeing thou despisest the wild beasts, if thou wilt not repent.” But Polycarp said, “Thou threatenest me with fire which burneth for an hour, and after a little is extinguished, but art ignorant of the fire of the coming judgment and of eternal punishment, reserved for the ungodly. But why tarriest thou? Bring forth what thou wilt.”

Commentary:

I think most who would self-identify as Christians would like to think that, if it came right down to it, they would stand against such persecution. I know that most of us, including me, have failed to stand for Christ when the stakes were much, much lower. How in the world do we expect to stand for Christ in death when we fail to stand for him in life?

Why do we fail to take Jesus seriously when he says, "... Fear only God who can destroy both soul and body in hell ... Everyone who acknowledges me publicly here on earth, I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven. But everyone who denies me here on earth, I will also deny before my Father in heaven ... If you refuse to take up your cross and follow me, you are not worthy of being mine. If you cling to your life, you will lose it; but if you give up your life for me, you will find it" (Matthew 10:28, 32-33, 38-39; NLT).

May we be as Polycarp!

Jeremy Green

Good Friday video

Would love for our church to take credit for this video, but we can't. Either way, it's pretty great.